A Single Piece of News

I’m thrilled with the news that Candlewick Press has picked up A Single Stone for publication in the US. Details are still to be determined but at this stage it looks like we are heading for a release in late 2016.

I’m very curious to see what the editorial process brings this time around. With Surface Tension/Below, there were numerous ‘Australianisms’ we discussed as part of that process. In some cases these were simple matters of terminology – do we leave ute as is or change to truck? If we keep the bush, will that conjure the wrong image for US readers?

But others were broader, relating more to socio-cultural differences – the way school house/faction systems work here; the leadership structure at local councils, and the like.

Given that this book is speculative fiction, and set in a world of my own devising, it might be tempting to think those sorts of things won’t apply. But even though it isn’t realist, I suspect the world I’ve made is unavoidably inflected with my Australian-ness. You can take the story out of Australia but you can’t take Australia out of the story etc.

I guess we’ll see. I’m looking forward to it, in any case.

In a neat metaphorical moment, the news of the US deal came to me like this:

I love that my email program red-flagged it as a likely scam, for no apparent reason. It’s exactly how my imposter-syndrome brain responds when confronted with good news of any kind. It was quite amusing – and a little confronting – to see it literalised like that.